Itunes songs are not drm protected any more. I just bought some songs yesterday and they are all over the house laptops and what not...
But I do agree with you that a lot of people have not even heard of Calibre, do not know they can remove drm or even that there is drm on the books they "bought"...but once they by chance find out - wanting to buy another reader, to borrow a ebook from a friend or what have you - then thanks to google they can find info on everything in just about an hour or so...Speaking from experience...

Well, I stand corrected! Looks like Apple abandoned DRM a while ago. Last I remember hearing was when they introduced a DRM-less option that cost more. I remember talking to all kinds of people, back in the day of Apple DRM music who didn't even know there was DRM on it. As you say, that's likely the case with many e-book buyers now.

As for the world of book DRM, format converting, etc, I think you'd be surprised to find how little people dig into stuff. For example, my friend vaguely knows that things can be done, but won't even consider loading a public-domain book I sent her into her Kindle. There are people who will bump up against the limitations and just shrug and decide that what they have works good enough. There will be the few that take the plunge, those who want to get the most out of their reader and their library. Here we are, after all. It's something of a hobby for us, but we're not normal.

This is an excellent point. Amazon doesn't need to do a thing about B&N. Although, I'd be sad to see B&N go.

They've moved on; their main target these days is Apple--witness the FireHD8.9 and its premium features. Apple's market share is so huge (and profitable) that even a sliver of takeaway is going to be big bucks.
(As Willie Sutton famously said; "That's where the money is.")

Well, I stand corrected! Looks like Apple abandoned DRM a while ago. Last I remember hearing was when they introduced a DRM-less option that cost more. I remember talking to all kinds of people, back in the day of Apple DRM music who didn't even know there was DRM on it. As you say, that's likely the case with many e-book buyers now.

As for the world of book DRM, format converting, etc, I think you'd be surprised to find how little people dig into stuff. For example, my friend vaguely knows that things can be done, but won't even consider loading a public-domain book I sent her into her Kindle. There are people who will bump up against the limitations and just shrug and decide that what they have works good enough. There will be the few that take the plunge, those who want to get the most out of their reader and their library. Here we are, after all. It's something of a hobby for us, but we're not normal.

What Apple also does now is that it lets you take thingie called itunes match which is 20$ a year (and you can only take it once if you want) in which they upgrade "your" songs if yours are of lower bitrate than theirs...anyway, you can see about it in the Apple forum...
As for the books, I agree, lots of people are reluctant, just as they used to be in the nineties with regard to using the PC. But if you just show them once how it works (like mailing the book and instructions how to side load it into ereader) they do become interested...it takes time, but I do think there are more and more ereader using people who are becoming interested in DRM policy its restrictions...

They effectively have gone for a form of ePub. The "KF8" format which most Kindle books now use is essentially ePub 3 in a Mobi "wrapper".

KF8 is essentially no better then ePub. Publishers are not going to want to create an eBook in ePub and then have to create one in KF8. They will create one in ePub and use that as the source for the KF8/Mobi versions.

KF8 is essentially no better then ePub. Publishers are not going to want to create an eBook in ePub and then have to create one in KF8. They will create one in ePub and use that as the source for the KF8/Mobi versions.

I didn't say it was "better than ePub"; I said that it basically was "ePub3 in a wrapper". That's the whole point of it - that publishers do just have to create the ePub - Amazon's "Kindlegen" tool puts it into the KF8 wrapper.